8 Great…Harry Potter Wanna-bes

Based on: The Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. (Jackson turns up in other series by the author as well.)Premise: A group of teens turn out to be the illegitimate spawn of Greek gods and humans – Percy learns he’s the son of Poseidon – and they must clear Percy’s name when he is accused of stealing Zeus’s lightning.Why it didn’t work: You can’t blame them for trying – they hired Chris Columbus, the filmmaker behind the first two Harry Potter movies, to direct, and they got an all-star cast (Rosario Dawson, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Uma Thurman, etc.) to play the gods of Olympus, much in the same way that the biggest names in British film were hired as the Hogwarts faculty. But despite a big push, Percy Jackson did middling business.Number of intended sequels: Four.Box office: $88.7 million

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